Insightful recurrent dream
I had a version of a recurring dream in which insight about the experience came to me while I was still in it.
Setting:
I've been given or sold a house. As usual, it's very beautiful and large, with many rooms, and towards the back there is a room that appears to be occupied. I never see who's there and I'm never sure that there is someone there, but it's part of the transaction. Towards the back of the house there is the entrance to a shopping mall. I have to walk through the living areas, through a large hall and pass the closed door of the room to get to the back part of the house to get to the mall.
This is recurrent, and a dream I have often.
I have speculated as to the identity of the 'other' in the room that lives in my house. I think it's my subconscious.
Although I usually enjoy the fact that a shopping mall is connected to my house (makes it convenient) I didn't 'get' its significance until the end of the dream.
Last night's variation of the dream is that I was supposed to get my son after school across the street in a park- I had to step out the front door at a predetermined time and I remembered I had an errand to run.
So I walked to the back and went through the nice comfortable hallway that lead to the mall entrance, and when I was walking around ran into an old friend from college who wanted me to see something in one of the stores. I told her I was in a hurry because I had something to do but she whined and promised it'd be quick. So I went with her through various stores. I noticed that many of the storefronts had a little tab with my name on it. My friend told me that this indicated that I owned the mall. I thought it was curious that the fact that I bought the house (and was paying a mortgage for it) also made me the mall owner, and all the clerks had my name on their paperwork so I could get better service. At some point I started to wake up realizing that the mall in the back of the house was the entrance to the astral plane, located in the deep subconscious (far behind the 'closed' door) and the nice cool, cozy, and comfortable tunnel was the transitional stage (tube type exit?) that I do, being reminiscent of many of my OBEs.
And then I woke up.